So, basically, a rambling anecdote and a quote for truth. Please try to include actual content in your posts in the future. Thanks.

Original Post:

I'm trying to work out intro-Ulduar wep choice based on recent postings about 1) weapon speed and 2) the small margin of difference between hit, str, and expertise until hit/expertise are capped. The question is this:

I have Jawbone and BoH, and I am a human. Changing no gear at all, Jawbone gives me +10 expertise (literally jump from 16 to expertise cap 26) and .2 seconds slower on weapon speed (3.4 to 3.6). Buffed with Kings, they both provide roughly the same AP amount. You also exchange crit/agility for haste.

This is not a "help me chose my gear post", but a question about stat weights vs. raw weapon damage with all the 3.1 changes. Consider it a hypothetical for the sake of argument.

I suppose I want to put everything together in my mind: would the reweighting of expertise (plus the human racial) push a weapon like Jawbone up to where it is equal or superior to a weapon with more base dps (like BoH)? Is this even a proper way to approach the issue? Flaws in argument and thought process are more than welcome.

In 3.0, this question would be rather silly. But I've run some personal target dummy tests with both weapons and Jawbone always provided me a boost in dps of several hundred. These were not proper tests and could easily have been due to bad dodge streaks with BoH. I'm not hanging my hat on what I 'felt' was the case.

Thoughts?

I would like to give you my own thoughts on this. During 3.0x, I designed my gear upgrades around BoH, meaning I made sure I was both hit and expertise capped when wielding BoH. I, unfortunately, lost the roll for BoH to a hunter, and am still wielding the Jawbone. In a lot of WWS parses, being hit/expertise capped using 1/5 T7.5 gear put me at or above those who were 4/5 T7.5 on most fights (the longer the fight went on, the better I performed vs the 4/5 T7.5 who was not hit/expertise capped). There was a Dranei Ret who had JC/BS, 4/5 T7.5 and BoH with everything BiS, but he was not hit/expertise capped. Burn fights he would beat me. Duration fights, I would edge by him.

Now, we compare WWS reports, and even with me still using the Jawbone (my only upgrade since then was the Obsidian Greathelm), I am now surpassing him on DPS in both old Naxx content as well as Ulduar (for what little we could kill).

Long story short: These guys don't lie when they say hit and expertise is king until cap, then STR all the way whenever you can.